Page 22 of How to Date a Prince

Easy, I suppose, if you know what you’re doing.

I press on, trying to make a dough.

I spoon the mixture into small lumps that could potentially become gingersnaps once they reach the oven. It’s with some relief that I put them in to bake.

Finally, I wash my hands and go find a cup of tea to relax. I wipe my hand across my brow, pushing the fallen hair out of my eyes. What a relief. Saved by an egg assist. I sit down with my tea, belatedly realizing that my feet ache after standing on the tile floors for some time. I take off my floury apron and hang it over the back of the chair beside me.

I scroll on my phone. I dare call up a photo of my mum, strawberry blonde and blue-eyed like me. She has an arm around my father, and they both beam at the camera. I’m standing between them, and my mum’s in a dress, visibly pregnant with my sister. We’re in the garden at Frogmore Cottage. What I’d give for a chance at a normal life again. For starters, all of the eggs in the kingdom.

At about the same time, I smell something burning.

And Thomas Golden yells my name.

ChapterNine

Rolling into the kitchen at a very unprincely pace, I arrive in time to watch Thomas Golden open the oven door to release a cloud of dark smoke, retrieve the blackened baking sheet, and drop it with a clatter onto the waiting cooling racks. I ignore the videographers and hurry over. Horrified, I stare down at the hard, flat lumps that once aspired to be gingersnaps and instead are charred into oblivion.

I glance at my watch, not daring to look at Thomas Golden right now. It had only been twenty minutes in the oven. I think. Thirty minutes, tops.

There’s an echoing silence as everyone contemplates my failure together with me. My shoulders slump down, and I swallow something back in my throat. It could be bile or despair or inadequacy. I shove my hands into my pockets.

“So he’s one out,” someone murmurs in the background.

Someone shushes him. But not before someone else saysgood riddance.

“Auggie,” says Colin brightly into the still tableau ofRenaissance Man. Thomas Golden is somewhere amid them. “Come with me.”

I’ll take any kind of intervention right now, divine or otherwise. This is very much the otherwise department.

My face burns. We leave the room to go stand in a rather spacious butler’s pantry, thin light falling through a tall window overlooking the welcoming gardens. It’s comfortingly dark in here. Until the filming crew arrives, Colin’s permanent entourage like a boy band united in a single movement.

I’m quiet, gazing out the window as they set up and talk amongst themselves. Swallowing, my chest is tight, my mouth dry. My ruined baking—and show prospects—mean I’ve failed both my mother’s memory and my father’s hopes in record time.

“Auggie.”

Reluctantly, I look at Colin. I search his eyes, wishing to be anywhere but here. Even in my room back in Buckingham Palace. Or off on horseback, out on the Sandringham Estate.

“What happened out there?” Colin asks, not unkindly, but it makes me feel worse.

With a shrug, I struggle to find words that die on my tongue. “I guess… I ruined the gingersnaps.”

“Rather,” he concedes with a bob of his head. Even his usual good cheer is diminished into something more somber. He peers at me with concern.

“I can’t bake. At all. Surprise.”

Colin is quiet for a long moment. “Let’s talk about what you decided to bake today.”

“Gingersnaps. They were supposed to be gingersnaps.”

If I could go back and unchoose gingersnaps in favor of anything else that didn’t involve baking, I would.

“Why did you choose gingersnaps?”

I press my lips flat while considering Colin. I want the cameras to go away, but they’re still there. Filming me being raw. And I hate it. I ball my fists in my pockets. I force a breath.

“Because they reminded me of my mother. And I can’t even do this one thing right. Excuse me. Please.”

I go to the ballroom, met with a camera crew to finish the last portion of the culinary competition, where everyone else has set up a table. I’m left with whatever’s on the sideboard. But there’s one thing I’ve learned, which is how to set a table correctly, and I do. I mix and match the china, arrange flowers and pampas grass in a cut crystal vase, making smaller bouquets for each setting in a water glass. I find cream linen napkins to match the roses.

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